Autumn Leaf

An Autumn leaf
Drifting in the wind
Sticks to a cold, glass window-pane
And weeps for the loss
Of it's lonely tree
Someone tell it
About life and loss.

An Autumn leaf
Drifting in the wind
Sticks to the fingers of a little boy
And smiles between the pages
Of his picture-book
It tells us what
We ought to leave behind.

Another Lifetime

It had been raining for a fortnight - the sky wept as if mourning the loss of an irreplaceable lost love; the sounds of its grieving cries echoed by thunder. The clouds that sailed overhead were massive, gray tufts of cottonball conjuring up random shapes, not very different from the sticky cotton-art pictures made by the chirpy 6 year olds who went to her for art lessons on Sundays. It wasn't Sunday. It was one of those days in the middle of monsoon when the joy of the first showers had long been spent and the empty, wet roads ten floors below her 4 bedroom apartment made her feel what she vehemently refused to give in to on better days - loneliness.

She was all of 39 years: married for 14 years and a mother of two. She had jumped into an arranged match with much hope of turning it into the warm, enduring kind of companionship that she had seen her parents share. However, the only adjective she could think of befitting her fourteen years of marriage was 'mellow'. They never had much to talk about beyond the shared mumbling of a few meaningless words across the dinner table drowned by the excited narration of the children about their newest achievement or mischief depending on which one did the talking. The worst was not when he was too immersed in work to talk. The worst were the silences when he did not have much work.

Mellow wasn't how she felt that evening. She felt the loss of something she had never had, something she had seen in the eyes of some of her friends who laughed more often. It was one of those days when loneliness crept up on her. So she did what she always did on one of those days – she closed her eyes and went back a thousand years to a different time –

She was young, perhaps pretty and a little breathless with laughter over some joke shared with the man holding her hand and looking at her with laughing, brown eyes. There were about a dozen other couples in the room dancing to the tune of a slow chart-topper and oblivious to the baby butterflies fluttering in her tummy just the way they were oblivious to anyone but each other. The music stopped for a couple of minutes as the orchestra prepared to burst into another feet-tapping number. He could see that she was a little tired and it was the perfect excuse for him to sweep her off the dance floor and have her all to himself for a few minutes until the next song. The empty couch near the balcony was soft enough to sink into and they slumped into it gratefully, still holding hands. She burst into a fit of tiny giggles and turned to him.

“I’m so happy”, she breathed between giggles. “You make me so happy.”

“Do I?” he asked. “Well that’s a start ‘cause I’m going to love you and keep you so happy for the rest of our lives that it’ll be enough to last you another lifetime.” 

Sometimes, when she thought hard enough, she almost believed that that was her. And then, like all those sometimes, she opened her eyes and whispered to herself, “I was another girl. It was another lifetime. And he loved me enough to last another lifetime. It has to last one more lifetime…this lifetime.”

Tomorrow

Cut from the neck of your guitar, 
I am but a broken piece of string, 
Rolled up in a spiral 
And left in the corner

With crushed up music sheets...
I can read the notes on them, 
While you go on making music - 
Some new and some that I have heard before - 
Every word a bleeding poem , 
Every note a crying song. 
At times I see you lost, 
At others you find yourself, 
And each day you walk away, 
Leaving me to wonder If I'll see you again...

Tomorrow?

Freedom

There was a parakeet on my terrace -
Colourful, chatty, caged.
It looked not sad;
In fact, it looked content...
A little resigned perhaps.
So, a fine day in spring,
I thought I should set it free.
It cooed and cawed and,
Perched on my fist,
Towards freedom
We marched.
The sky was a frothy blue,
A heaven for avian flight;
And yet, on my fist,
The parakeet sat,
Gazing up,
Sans a flutter...
Until it dawned on me,
That freedom was a lesson,
My pet had yet to learn.
And I stood staring at my bird
Wondering when 'I' had lost my wings.

To Friendship

So moved am I by random things,
That barely do I pause,
To reflect in sync;
Order has lost it's music:
It is much like the broken string
On my father's old violin,
Left to it's piteous fate
In a room which used to be his.
A thought,
A pause,
Another thought...not quite siblings;
But I feel their smiles -
They are friends -
And friends make music,
Even when
They look for none.

Some thoughts...

Some thoughts trickle down my window pane,
Hand in hand with the monsoon showers.
The rain I can touch,
The thoughts I cannot.
So, with blind eyes,
I feel...
Until, with the rain,
They disappear
Beneath the blue forget-me-nots
At my window.

A Little Piece of Heaven

You were a tiny bundle in my arms
When you smiled your little smile
A little lopsided to the left
Your eyes were still closed
That's how I knew you were dreamin'
And my heart turned over in my chest
That's when I knew
You were my little ray of sunshine
My little piece of heaven
My little piece of joy without fail.

You grow up a little everyday
Taller, smarter, bigger
How long before you leave the nest?
You'll find love and laughter
And a little heartbreak too
But know that it's all for the best
Just always remember
There's a little cloud of doubt
And a little rain of love
But a little wind of laughter tips the scale.

There'll be days in your tomorrows
When you'll have paths to choose
Cross mountains that seem too tall to climb
Choose right and be true
And you'll reach where you want to be
You might stumble but you'll have your time
And I pray this day
For little hugs of comfort
For little words of praise
And moments of hope to help you prevail.

There'll come a time in life
When you reach out your hand to hold another
A time to know where you belong
A lifetime of promise and trust
A lifetime of love
A little note of music that holds a timeless song
And I want you to remember
With a little bit of laughter
And a little rain of love
You can build your own heaven of joy to sail.